A week after Intel announced it had begun shipping its first dual-core, hyper-threaded processors for multi-processor servers, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has claimed technology leadership in the dual-core market.
Last week, Intel enterprise group marketing director Rick Skett played up Intel`s successful fast-tracking of its Xeon dual-core processors for the server market at a breakfast in Johannesburg for partners and members of the media.
This week, AMD EMEA emerging markets sales director Pierre Brunswick also held a media briefing in Johannesburg, stating: "AMD has no competitor on dual-core."
Discounting Intel`s recently announced dual-core performance benchmarks, Brunswick claims AMD processors are more competitive in terms of total cost of ownership (TCO).
Enterprise has shifted its TCO metric from traditional price performance to price performance per watt, according to Brunswick. "Here AMD has no competitor because its processors require between 50 and 70 watts less power."
Cooler, more energy efficient and interconnected cores, says Brunswick, enable AMD`s dual-core processors to outperform anyone in the industry.
Analysts concur
Industry analysts appear to support Brunswick`s contentions regarding performance and power costs, with some saying that while both Intel and AMD have a good range of dual-core processors, AMD offers the most attractive deal in terms of performance and power consumption.
Industry benchmarks published this month show a typical Athlon 64 X2 3800+ system uses less than 100W, which is about 50% less than an equivalent Intel-based system.
[VIDEO]Although insisting on AMD`s technical superiority, Brunswick stepped back from the rhetoric to encourage users to test both AMD and Intel dual-core processors and compare performance and TCO, based on price performance per watt, to identify the best product for particular applications.
AMD also believes it has the competitive-edge in terms of dual-core performance because of its architectural design. "Unlike our competitor, the two processors do not operate in isolation, but communicate with each other to share information resulting in over 70% better performance."
Again it seems analysts concur, with BusinessWeek reporting in August that AMD`s "elegantly designed dual-core chips and surrounding architecture" were becoming increasingly popular with customers and server-makers such as HP, Sun and IBM.
As recently as last month, IDG commented that when it comes to dual-core computing, Intel has significantly lagged AMD, so while AMD may not lead yet in terms of market share, its technology is helping make inroads.
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